Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville

Chapter 14

Some Reflections On American Manners

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which
men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners. The
influence of the social and political state of a country upon manners is therefore deserving of serious examination.
Manners are, generally, the product of the very basis of the character of a people, but they are also sometimes the
result of an arbitrary convention between certain men; thus they are at once natural and acquired. When certain men
perceive that they are the foremost persons in society, without contestation and without effort — when they are
constantly engaged on large objects, leaving the more minute details to others — and when they live in the enjoyment of
wealth which they did not amass and which they do not fear to lose, it may be supposed that they feel a kind of haughty
disdain of the petty interests and practical cares of life, and that their thoughts assume a natural greatness, which
their language and their manners denote. In democratic countries manners are generally devoid of dignity, because
private life is there extremely petty in its character; and they are frequently low, because the mind has few
opportunities of rising above the engrossing cares of domestic interests. True dignity in manners consists in always
taking one’s proper station, neither too high nor too low; and this is as much within the reach of a peasant as of a
prince. In democracies all stations appear doubtful; hence it is that the manners of democracies, though often full of
arrogance, are commonly wanting in dignity, and, moreover, they are never either well disciplined or accomplished.

The men who live in democracies are too fluctuating for a certain number of them ever to succeed in laying down a
code of good breeding, and in forcing people to follow it. Every man therefore behaves after his own fashion, and there
is always a certain incoherence in the manners of such times, because they are moulded upon the feelings and notions of
each individual, rather than upon an ideal model proposed for general imitation. This, however, is much more
perceptible at the time when an aristocracy has just been overthrown than after it has long been destroyed. New
political institutions and new social elements then bring to the same places of resort, and frequently compel to live
in common, men whose education and habits are still amazingly dissimilar, and this renders the motley composition of
society peculiarly visible. The existence of a former strict code of good breeding is still remembered, but what it
contained or where it is to be found is already forgotten. Men have lost the common law of manners, and they have not
yet made up their minds to do without it; but everyone endeavors to make to himself some sort of arbitrary and variable
rule, from the remnant of former usages; so that manners have neither the regularity and the dignity which they often
display amongst aristocratic nations, nor the simplicity and freedom which they sometimes assume in democracies; they
are at once constrained and without constraint.

This, however, is not the normal state of things. When the equality of conditions is long established and complete,
as all men entertain nearly the same notions and do nearly the same things, they do not require to agree or to copy
from one another in order to speak or act in the same manner: their manners are constantly characterized by a number of
lesser diversities, but not by any great differences. They are never perfectly alike, because they do not copy from the
same pattern; they are never very unlike, because their social condition is the same. At first sight a traveller would
observe that the manners of all the Americans are exactly similar; it is only upon close examination that the
peculiarities in which they differ may be detected.

The English make game of the manners of the Americans; but it is singular that most of the writers who have drawn
these ludicrous delineations belonged themselves to the middle classes in England, to whom the same delineations are
exceedingly applicable: so that these pitiless censors for the most part furnish an example of the very thing they
blame in the United States; they do not perceive that they are deriding themselves, to the great amusement of the
aristocracy of their own country.

Nothing is more prejudicial to democracy than its outward forms of behavior: many men would willingly endure its
vices, who cannot support its manners. I cannot, however, admit that there is nothing commendable in the manners of a
democratic people. Amongst aristocratic nations, all who live within reach of the first class in society commonly
strain to be like it, which gives rise to ridiculous and insipid imitations. As a democratic people does not possess
any models of high breeding, at least it escapes the daily necessity of seeing wretched copies of them. In democracies
manners are never so refined as amongst aristocratic nations, but on the other hand they are never so coarse. Neither
the coarse oaths of the populace, nor the elegant and choice expressions of the nobility are to be heard there: the
manners of such a people are often vulgar, but they are neither brutal nor mean. I have already observed that in
democracies no such thing as a regular code of good breeding can be laid down; this has some inconveniences and some
advantages. In aristocracies the rules of propriety impose the same demeanor on everyone; they make all the members of
the same class appear alike, in spite of their private inclinations; they adorn and they conceal the natural man.
Amongst a democratic people manners are neither so tutored nor so uniform, but they are frequently more sincere. They
form, as it were, a light and loosely woven veil, through which the real feelings and private opinions of each
individual are easily discernible. The form and the substance of human actions often, therefore, stand in closer
relation; and if the great picture of human life be less embellished, it is more true. Thus it may be said, in one
sense, that the effect of democracy is not exactly to give men any particular manners, but to prevent them from having
manners at all.

The feelings, the passions, the virtues, and the vices of an aristocracy may sometimes reappear in a democracy, but
not its manners; they are lost, and vanish forever, as soon as the democratic revolution is completed. It would seem
that nothing is more lasting than the manners of an aristocratic class, for they are preserved by that class for some
time after it has lost its wealth and its power — nor so fleeting, for no sooner have they disappeared than not a trace
of them is to be found; and it is scarcely possible to say what they have been as soon as they have ceased to be. A
change in the state of society works this miracle, and a few generations suffice to consummate it. The principal
characteristics of aristocracy are handed down by history after an aristocracy is destroyed, but the light and
exquisite touches of manners are effaced from men’s memories almost immediately after its fall. Men can no longer
conceive what these manners were when they have ceased to witness them; they are gone, and their departure was unseen,
unfelt; for in order to feel that refined enjoyment which is derived from choice and distinguished manners, habit and
education must have prepared the heart, and the taste for them is lost almost as easily as the practice of them. Thus
not only a democratic people cannot have aristocratic manners, but they neither comprehend nor desire them; and as they
never have thought of them, it is to their minds as if such things had never been. Too much importance should not be
attached to this loss, but it may well be regretted.

I am aware that it has not unfrequently happened that the same men have had very high-bred manners and very low-born
feelings: the interior of courts has sufficiently shown what imposing externals may conceal the meanest hearts. But
though the manners of aristocracy did not constitute virtue, they sometimes embellish virtue itself. It was no ordinary
sight to see a numerous and powerful class of men, whose every outward action seemed constantly to be dictated by a
natural elevation of thought and feeling, by delicacy and regularity of taste, and by urbanity of manners. Those
manners threw a pleasing illusory charm over human nature; and though the picture was often a false one, it could not
be viewed without a noble satisfaction.